Speaking Requests

Thank you for coming to my home away from home; this blog! Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension started in June 2010 as a way for me to become a better teacher. I knew I needed to change, I knew I had to throw most of my old ways out and I needed a place to reflect; thus this blog was born. Now several years later, with many global conversations started, I am proud of the work that is here.

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A Personal Mission

I want students to love school. This means that in my own classroom students are empowered in their learning journey in order to achieve a highly engaged and personalized learning environment. As a teacher, it means that this blog, the books I have written, the speaking I do, and also the professional development I have been a part of centers around trying to create environments where not just students thrive, but staff as well. I have a dream of schools where all stakeholders feel they have a voice; that is my driving force.

What type of speaking do I do?

Workshops for school districts, as well as in-service PD days.

Keynotes for conferences, as well as featured presentations and workshops depending on need.

A variety of other speaking based on need, if in doubt, ask.

I am fortunate enough to be invited to share this vision, and practical progress toward it, with many different audiences. Some key areas I have focused on center around creating passionate readers and writers, infusing global collaboration using technology, highly engaging student learning experiences, and overall personalization. My workshops/sessions are interactive and blend story-telling with practical how-to’s that participants can implement right away. Working with other teachers is a thing I love and am honored to be asked to do.

My Areas of Expertise:

Creating a passionate literacy community

Personalized learning environments for staff and students

Student engagement and empowerment

Global collaboration through technology infusion

What You Can Expect:

Personal attention and development of project intended to fit your purpose.

Prompt communication.

A personalized and interactive delivery that will fulfill the needs of the target audience.

Accessibility and an ongoing relationship after the talk. I become a trusted resource for the audience as they move forward.

Frequently Requested Keynotes and Sessions:

Passionate Learners – How to Engage and Empower Your Students

Would you want to be a student in your own learning environment? In this keynote, based on the book Passionate Learners: How to Engage and Empower Your Students, 7th-grade teacher Pernille Ripp will help both novice and seasoned educators create a positive, interactive learning environment where students drive their own academic achievement by honoring the individual child. Attendees will hear practical strategies for how to build a meaningful relationship with your learners based on mutual trust, respect, and honesty, share ownership of the classroom and school with them, and break out of the vicious cycle of punishment and reward to control student behavior. Based on common-sense strategies, personal storytelling and the research behind student engagement, this is a keynote meant to move you to action. Whether you are just beginning or well on your way in your teaching career, this session is meant to inspire you, help you take some risks, and eagerly pursue your journey toward a school filled with passionate learners.

This keynote can also be geared specifically toward administrators.

Note: this can also be adapted into a featured presentation or a workshop.

Passionate Readers – The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child

With 26% of adults reporting that they have not read a book in the last 12 months, we are facing a mounting reading crisis. So what can we, as the educators who teach this future generation of readers, do to create more engaging reading experiences? In this session, based on the book Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child, educator Pernille Ripp will help you re-discover the keys of creating a community of readers, no matter the constricts facing your time. Focusing on teacher reading identity, classroom environment and library, as well as student reading identity, this is a session sure to create conditions for more reading joy and deeper engagement with reading. From re-thinking major literacy decisions to all of the small decisions we make daily; this is meant to be a practical session that will offer up ideas to be implemented the very next day.

Note: this can also be adapted into a featured presentation or a workshop.

Featured Sessions:

Note: Any of these can also be used as a keynote.

Using Shared Reading to Increase Reading Joy

Creating opportunities for students to interact with one another through the use of book clubs, short story discussions, read aloud, and other shared reading opportunities is a way to increase engagement, create reading joy, as well as teach important literacy skills. But how do we set up our shared learning opportunities to guarantee access and enjoyment for students and educators alike? Join educator, Pernille Ripp, as she discusses best practices within shared reading and discussion, as well as the lessons her students have taught her throughout the years when it comes to developing rich discussions, community investment, and comprehensive understanding of reading.

Cultivating and Retaining Passionate Teachers

For administrators and those who work with teachers, this session is focused on ways to help staff feel empowered, engaged, and excited to work with students. From more meaningful staff interactions to building a culture of trust that reverberates within classroom work, this session is meant to inspire, as well as provide practical ways for your school or district to take it to the next level.

But They Still Hate Reading – Establishing and Cultivating a Personal Reading Identity

The message is clear among literacy communities; we want to help our students become readers for life, we want them to establish a positive relationship with reading, but we need more ideas that focus on the individual development of reading identity. So what do we do when we believe in choice, when we believe in inclusive access, when we believe we have the components needed for each child to be successful, and yet, it does not seem to be enough? What do we do not just on the first day of school but every single day after when those kids who hate reading just grow in their hatred rather than change their minds? Focusing on creating authentic opportunities for students to recognize, (re-)establish, and cultivate positive reading identities this session is meant for the educator looking for practical ideas in their quest to help students become passionate readers. Based on literacy research, personal anecdotes, and advice from her students, this session focuses on practical tools, reflective conversations, as well as easily implementable ideas that will help you continue the work you have started toward a thriving reading community.

Personalized Learning – A Journey Toward a Better Way of Teaching

For teachers and schools just starting out on their personalized learning journey, this focuses on all of the small changes that lead to truly personalized learning environments through the 5 tenets of choice. Using a blend of personal experience, story-telling, as well as practical how-to’s participants leave with ideas they can implement right away for an immediate change.

A Picture Book Taught Me This

While picture books are a staple of the elementary classroom, there often is no place for them with our older students, yet these are the students that need picture books the most. Discover how picture books can help older students close read, conquer complex message, become stronger writers, as well as spark their love of reading again all through the use of carefully selected picture books.

Reimagining Literacy Through Global Collaboration

Have you ever wondered what can happen when you integrate technology into your literacy instruction? Pernille Ripp and her students have been reading, writing, and discussing with the world since 2010, fundamentally changing the way she teaches and how her students read and write. Join us as we share ideas for how technology can take your literacy instruction to a new level, including ways to use Skype, Twitter, Edmodo, blogging, and many other tech tools that will allow for global collaboration, cross-curricular projects, and sparking the love of reading and writing in students.

Passionate Writers – Helping Students Become True Writers

While writing continues to be a skill that all children must develop, how do we help students feel like true writers, the type of writers who feel like their work matters beyond the classroom lesson? In this session, we will discuss small tweaks and practical tips on how to help students develop their writer’s voice to see writing as something that matters to them. With this renewed investment, we can help them dig deeper in their writing explorations, to truly become passionate writers no matter their skill level.

Workshops:

I offer both a half-day or a full-day workshop based on needs. Frequently requested workshops include, but are not limited to:

Passionate Learners – Empowering and Engaging Students

A full day or half-day workshop focused on attendees taking a journey through their current learning environment to find places they can incorporate change into for better student engagement. This workshop focuses on the practical implementation of change in key areas such as classroom setup, homework policies, assessment practices, as well as personalization of curriculum. This workshop is one meant to empower attendees in their current practices while inspiring them to create meaningful change opportunities.

Passionate Readers – The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child

With 24% of adults reporting that they have not read a book in the last 12 months, we are facing a mounting reading crisis. So what can we, as the educators who teach this future generation of readers, do to create more engaging reading experiences? In this session, based on the book Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child, 7th-grade teacher Pernille Ripp will help you re-discover the keys of creating a community of readers, no matter the constricts facing your time. Focusing on teacher reading identity, classroom environment and library, as well as student reading identity, this is a session sure to inspire.

Fees

Fees are flexible, as are sessions, consulting, as well as whether on-site teaching is desired. All sessions will be customized to fit your needs, environment, and learning target. I only do a limited amount of sessions every year during the school year so these get booked quickly.

Professional Development and Consulting

I have been fortunate enough to lead professional development across the world in-person in school districts and at conferences, as well as globally through webinars, conferences, and into classrooms presentations. Participants leave my workshops feeling energized, inspired, and ready to change the way they teach.

I have done consulting for companies such as Adobe, Skype, Microsoft, and Fuhu as well as individual schools and districts.

Like this:

15 thoughts on “Speaking Requests”

I want to order your book. I read your article this morning in Education Week and you are spot on, spot on, spot on. I am the director of education for Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and the concepts in your article align with what I believe and what I try to inspire in educators that use Iditarod in the classroom. Diane Johnson, djohnson@iditarod.com
I would like to chat about a few things with you! Please contact me. Thanks!

Pernille, I would like to reprint your blog about the Mystery Skype call in our free bi-monthly TechNotes e-newsletter that is sent out to more than 36,000 people around the world from TCEA. TCEA is a non-profit association that helps educators integrate technology into the classroom to innovate teaching and learning. Would you grant permission to reprint your wonderful blog post with full attribution to you?

Hey there! I understand this is somewhat off-topic but I needed to ask.
Does operating a well-established blog like yours
take a lot of work? I’m brand new to operating a blog but I
do write in my journal daily. I’d like to start a blog so I will be able to share
my personal experience and views online. Please let me know if you have any ideas or tips for new aspiring blog owners.
Thankyou!

Yes, it does, however, I blog for myself and not for money or anything like that so it takes as much time as I feel like putting into it. I think my best advice is just to start if you want to, do it for yourself and make it yours. Good luck to you.

Pernille, I love your blog and can relate to your ups and downs in the classroom. We are enjoying the GRA, too, and love connecting with other classes. I am struggling with something in my classroom and would love your thoughts. I have one hour for literacy (reading and word work). Writing is separate with another class. (Don’t ask). My literacy class is a workshop model, where students have about 25 minutes of reading each day, after my mini-lesson, Then we have a few minutes of share. I am wondering how to squeeze in the much needed word work to my 4 different groups of learners. I know I can use homework to squeeze in extra spelling/vocab practice, but I need to make it meaningful. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks! Jennifer

We do it at the beginning of class for about 5 minutes and only every other week in 7th grade (we have 50 words (root or vocabulary)) to get through. However, in my 5th grade classroom we did root word study which really got most of the kids more excited – here is a link to what we did http://www.mrsripp.com/2014/03/new-spelling-words-and-program.html
It wasn’t perfect but it didn’t take a lot of time and the students got it more than any other typeI have tried.
It is a struggle whenever we have any kind of shortened time, however, I wonder too, how long is your mini-lesson?

Thank you for getting back to me to quickly. My mini-lessons are typically no longer than 15 minutes. I am using 14th goldfish as my read-aloud to tie into my mini-lessons on character study. When all is said and done, students (4th grade) usually have a good 20-25 minutes to read. One day a week (which may be every other week) students are writing me a response letter about what they’re reading (focus is on the mini-lesson unit). Every other week, students are blogging for HW (reading journals and blogs is a lot to manage, though). I haven’t been able to squeeze in guided reading groups yet, but soon I’d like to start book clubs. I will take a look at how you did spelling. Thanks for sharing, Pernille!

Pernille, you are amazing! I was at CESA1 to hear you speak yesterday and am so inspired. I have participated in the GRA the last two years and have read your blog often. Subtle changes in my classroom are in the works! My question for you is in relation to grading. Do you grade work often or just when checking for mastery? Any thoughts would be welcomed. I am a 5th grade teacher, so my students enter middle school next year. I continue with the struggle with the usefulness of handing out grades on their daily work. Who are the grades for? Are they encouraging or discouraging? I plan on doing a padlet today to get the student’s thoughts on how grades make them feel, but I would love your input as well!

Thank you so much, Shelly, yesterday was wonderful! I try to change the conversation that we have about grades so instead of focusing on the grades, the kids focus on their growth. I write a lot about how I do it here on the blog so it may be easier to choose some of these than writing it all out. https://pernillesripp.com/?s=grades&submit=Search I don’t know if grades are inherently bad or good but how we use them is not working for kids. They feel like they have little control over them and that it is something that is just done to them, so in our classroom, they reflect on everything and assess themselves on any longer projects before I assess it. We then talk about the constant growth they are trying to accomplish and how they will get there.

Hi Pernilles,
I have just attended the joint EARCOS/SENIA conference in Bangkok and wanted to say how VERY much I enjoyed listening to your keynote session…..and I then signed up for your ‘passionate readers’ talk – wow! I am gutted now that I didn’t also attend your session on passionate writers but had committed to something else at the time.

I’m sure you hear this all the time but you truly are an incredibly inspirational speaker! I have been reading and loving your email blogs for a while (having signed up for something a while ago!) and I was so excited when I realised you were actually going to be speaking at SENIA this year and that I would get a chance to hear you in person.

I have been teaching overseas in international schools for almost 30 years and during that time have been lucky enough to attend many conferences and workshops. However, I can honestly say that your presentation was one of the most honest, from the heart, meaningful talks I have listened to. Thank you!

I heard your keynote talk at NCSLMA and have been on a mission ever since to bring the joy back to reading for so many of my students who are burned out on AR. I am currently working on a group graduate school project (website) on the Debate about Accelerated Reader. May we (my group) have permission to use a few short quotes from one of your blog posts and link back to it for those who want to read more about arguments against using AR? Thank you!

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Disclaimer

Of course these opinions, musings, rants and reflections do not express the opinion of my employer. One would be crazy to think that one single teacher could be the mouth piece for an entire district. Nor are my posts meant to offend mostly, nor mislead but rather provide a snapshot of my mind at a certain point in time on a topic.
So please feel free to disagree, agree, compliment or discourage further blogging but promise to not think this is in any way an official mode of communication for my employer. These are my opinions and while I stand behind them right now they may change so while you are at it, don't hold that against me either.

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